Recon/Theories
__FORCETOC__ Significance of MiB Locke offering his hand to Kate *At one point Locke offers Kate his hand and smiles to her when she is sitting by the Banyan trees. It looked like she would reach up and take it (the pause was quite long) but at the last second she doesn't touch him. Instead she gets up herself. I believe this is significant. It shows us that Kate has not fully gone over to Locke's side. She is not definitely in allegiance with him. Perhaps as with Jacob, having physical contact with the MiB has some significance. Who killed the Ajira passengers and crew and when? Theory 1 MiB/ Smoke Monster killed the remaining Ajira passengers Evidence: # There is no blood or gunshot wounds # They are decomposing (Sawyer's gag reaction) so their deaths occured some time earlier, when the Sub hadn't arrived and when the Smoke Monster had an opportunity. They've been there since shortly right before Smokie sought James/Sawyer at New Otherton. # In Follow the Leader, Frank returns to Hydra and his first question is where are the rest of the passengers, who appear to be gone. It would make it possible for the Smoke Monster to have killed them all, because Flocke was on this Island first before he was taken by boat to the other Island by Ben. He seemed eager to leave (against: when Flocke left with Ben they left living passengers behind, i.e. Caesar's guys) # The bodies, and the way they were killed looks like a Smoke Monster Job as there doesn't appear to have been much of a fight, their clothes, shoes are strewn and there are 3 distinct dragging paths. We have seen the Monster breaak into three before and the dragging is obvious of his pattern. # Whoever was responsible for the killings is the party who showed up behind Sawyer, Juliet, Miles etc in the rain storm shooting at them before the time flash. Rain is another indicator tht the Smoke Monster is about to strike. # The bodies have been piled together. In the episode where the smoke monster kills Bram and his team at the statue "Locke" piles up the bodies of his victims. # MiB now has all the people he needs to leave the island. The remaining Ajira passengers & crew were expendable. # In Season 5 "The Incident" Part 1 "Locke tells Richard that they must also "take care of" the other Ajira passengers..." # Several smoothed out paths in the sand shown when Sawyer is approaching the pile of bodies indicate the smoke monster has moved through the area. Theory 2 Widmore killed the remaining Ajira passengers Evidence: # The Lost Encyclopedia states that he did. # If Widmore ordered The Purge, he's capable of such mass killings. # He was on Hydra island when the Sawyer found the bodies. # Sawyer suspected him. Theory 3 Ilana's group Evidence # ? Theory 4 Richard killed them Evidence #FLocke told Richard to "deal with" the Ajira passengers. *Richard was missing from mulitiple episodes, and when he came back Jack asked where he had been, Richard said something like you wouldn't believe me if I told you. Other theories # They were all in contact with Smokey/FLocke after the crash. Contact with Smokey causes the "sickness" (ie: Danielle's team). The "sickness" caused them to kill one another. Upon arrival, Widmore's people had to clear the area (to set a trap, health reasons,etc...)and removed the bodys to the "open grave" which could also be significant (purge victims, Christian, etc...) # Widmore's tiny submarine could not possibly have carried the sonic fence pylons which probably come straight from Hydra Island's storehouse. Considering the Ajira passengers found those sonic fence pylons and accidentally messed with these would reasonably account for their accidental demise. ## what are you basing the size of the submarine one, on the visible portion that is seen protruding from the top of the water's surface? Think of an iceberg... Also, they may have made multiple trips to the island or orchestrated a dharma like drop of supplies in anticipation of their arrival. # Other possibble leftovers in Hydra Island's storehouse. i.e. lethal gas canisters, could have equally been accountable for the passengers' demise. *Starvation. By the corpses existence, it is more likely that they all refused to become cannibals for an emergency food source option. * Dehydration. It's been at most a week since the crash. It can take a month or more to die of starvation. More likely it would be dehydration. * Attack by wildlife. The Hydra station once housed animals that may still be roaming around. Other wildlife may exist on the Hydra island, much like boar and panda bears existed on the main island. * Mass hysteria. Succumbed to this social phenomenon and some survivors may have attacked their fellow survivors. Any weapons found in the Hydra station may have fuelled this, or disagreements in the group (much like we have seen in Season 1 of the Flight 815 survivors) on a confined area. It could have also been fuelled by The Whispers and the mysterious disappearance of the plane's pilot, and some fellow passengers (Ben, Sun, Ilana, Sayid, etc.) - inluding the Man in Black who had actively claimed to have returned from the dead. ("I remember dying.") (See Wikipedia for more info on 'group hysteria'). *Illness or disease. They lived in an unhygienic and unsheltered environment which does not have any access to a stable supply of medical supplies, such as antibiotics. The "Sawyer" FS James wanted to kill was... himself Two things about Sawyer's flash sideways in seem off after learning it's the afterlife. First, Sawyer says his parents died when he was nine. His parents actually died when he was eight. This may seem like a minor continuity error, the sort that inevitably turns up in a series this long. The weird thing is, the show as recently as the season five finale correctly dated their death. With that date so fresh in the writers' minds, why would they get it wrong? Second, Sawyer is still searching for the "real" Sawyer. Why? He resolved that long-standing issue in Season 3. He doesn't remember this, but why drag a resolved issue into the afterlife, and why should Lost return to an arc that had finished? To answer this, take a look at the other person who's spending their afterlife thinking about Anthony Cooper. Locke doesn't imagine Cooper in a catatonic state because he wants quality time with him. Cooper instead personifies new baggage Locke accumulated during the series -- guilt over permanently injuring someone in a plane crash. Sawyer similarly may not be still mourning his parents' death. Instead, he's seeking revenge for the death of someone who died later, someone who (sort of) died in 1977 instead of 1976. Someone whose death Sawyer was still mourning in real time when we saw that flash sideways. Look at the next things Sawyer says when explaining his problem to Miles: }} Which grifter named Sawyer do you think he's subconsciously trying to hunt down and kill? To extend this idea beyond what's reasonable, who's the father who killed Sawyer's mother before killing himself? Or is James blaming a man named Sawyer for the death of a different couple? This second idea is even more likely. Before his awakening, Sawyer and Juliet brush by each other in . They don't wake each other up. They don't even give each other a second look. But they meet shortly after, are indeed drawn together and wake up. Something happened between these two scenes to let them let go. It's no use looking at what happened to Juliet - we barely got a look at her in the flash sideways, so we can only speculate really vaguely about her. But Sawyer, still a main character... he matters. And he has one more flash sideways scene. In which he... talks to Jin and Sun. And they, the couple whose death he caused, the couple whose child he orphaned... tell him they're fine and that he need no longer worry about them. Right after, he's able to connect with Juliet and remember. Sawyer's guilt over his own actions was his baggage in the flash sideways. He was the "Sawyer" he was seeking and wanted to kill.